"It's manic monday!", that was what the Bangles said.
"I wish it was sunday. Cause it's my funday..."
Every monday, on the way to work, I often wished to meet the person who came up with this very idea:
"8-hour day, and 5-working day a week"
Later on, the descendants of this very person probably found this wasn't enough, so they added the word
"At least"
in to the rules. Years later, my bosses probably like this rule so much, so they added
"require medical certificate if taking friday or monday off"
I guess we can never win. I started to dig around and found this:
"So, who gave us the 5 day, 8 hours per day, work week? Was it really the unions, was it really higher regulations? No, the historical answer is that it was Heny Ford who gave us the 5 day, 8 hours per day, work week. Ford was tired of continuously losing good employees, he was trying to increase employee retention and at the same time increase profits, so he basically doubled wages and implemented a 5-day work week, and in the process effectively invented the modern weekend..." from [2]Henry Ford gave an interview about this idea since October 1926! [3]. He had a very good foresight about reducing working hours to increase productivity. In fact, it has been a long standing fight between the bosses and their workers since 1810 [1]. Workers have been fighting against 16-hour working day, 6-day week since then. They won a 10-hour working day, 6-day week in 1817. I guess we become more civilised and we got 8-hour working day since 1866 [1].
Hmm. Something was not quite right! Today is monday. I submit my timesheet every monday morning. My timesheet for this week (as well as the last 2 weeks) clocked at 60 hours!
Hang a sec! Is this 2012? or is it back to 1810 again? Who is winning now?
References:
- [1] Eight-hour day, Wikipedia.org
- [2] Economic Myths: The 5 Day Work Week And The 8 Hour Day, HispanicPundit.com
- [3] HENRY FORD: Why I Favor Five Days' Work With Six Days' Pay, WorklessParty.org
No comments:
Post a Comment